


Bury all your dead...

by Ellenka



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-02-26 19:26:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2663591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellenka/pseuds/Ellenka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>... up in my cemetery head. (Gale & Katniss, digging through some ashes & bodies.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. enough

**Author's Note:**

> All ownership disclaimed. Title/ subtitle combo from "Putting Holes in Happiness".

Ashes.

They stick at the back of my throat, in the pores of my skin, long after I'd spent the few minutes allotted for a shower frantically trying to throw them up and scrub them off.

I wonder if mother and Prim can feel them too, choking them days and weeks after they escaped the burning of Twelve. For me, seeing the aftermath today was enough.

(Even though I am the one supposed to be strong for both of them, aren't I?)

Now is not a good time to ask, with both of them sound asleep, Prim still unconsciously clutching Buttercup to her chest.

Only I am awake again, restless and suffocated in our tiny quarters.

I slip out of the bed and pad to the door on socked feet, careful not to disturb them.

The corridor is still cramped and underground, but at least it stretches to a distance, lit by dim emergency lamps.

I move along a row off identical doors like a ghost, until I hear a sound coming from behind, catching up to me. Startled, I dart into the nearest perpendicular corridor, and peer back around the corner.

A large figure is approaching with soundless footsteps, quietly murmuring to a bundle clasped in its arms.

I'd know the silhouette everywhere.

Gale, carrying his baby sister. She must have nightmares too.

I duck back behind the wall, and soon hear the almost imperceptible clicks of doors opening and closing, only a few compartments over from ours. The refugees from Twelve must be arranged alphabetically, with hardly any names left between the Everdeens and the Hawthornes.

Then the clicking sounds repeat once more, and my breathing quickens. I don't hear anything, but I feel his presence even before he rounds my corner.

Of course Gale noticed me here.

"Hey," he whispers.

"Hey," I murmur back, face hidden behind loose hair. "Still worried about how I'm handling it?"

Gale leans against the wall, a few feet away from me. "Shouldn't I be?"

I let out a long breath. "I can handle it," I say firmly, mostly to reassure myself, and twist my bracelet around my arm. Not like I really believed it nowadays. "I didn't mean it like that. I just… don't know what to tell you. Or how to."

"Yeah, I figured."

It used to be easy. So easy. He used to be the only person I could tell everything to, without thinking, without filtering, without pretending. And vice versa.

Where have those two people gone?

To ashes and underground.

I already miss them.

There's only one person I miss more, alive as I finally found out today, but beyond reach.

Until I can help him, I have to make do with what I got.

I finally look up, at Gale. Only one half of his face is really visible in the dim glow, the one with the burn mark from Twelve still fresh and angry. Suddenly, I'm torn between wanting to run my fingers over it, and wanting to run far away from the reminder.

"I haven't asked you either," I say softly. "Or Prim and mom."

"You've been through your own hell, Katniss. You don't have to handle everything." Gale runs his hand through his hair, messing it even more. It's getting longer, a few black strands fall forward to shadow the burn scar. For a moment, I'm glad he hadn't gotten the buzzcut most men from Thirteen and even our refugees-turned-soldiers seem to have. He looks more like I remember him, like my boy from the woods. He's no longer wearing the sling I'd seen on the hovercraft, but his arm still moves stiffly. The Capitol has touched all of us, imprinted us with pain.

"But still…"

"They'll manage. And I'm sure they wouldn't want you to worry about them on top of everything else. We survived. Unlike so many… You've seen it yourself now. Damn it." He shakes his head roughly. "Maybe I could have reached more people if I ran just a bit faster, figured out what they are gonna do just a bit sooner… Maybe if I'd managed to gather more people, they'd have spotted us through the smoke and blasted everyone. I'll never know. It's not like I'll ever stop thinking about it." He turns away, leaning back and lightly knocking his head against the wall. "Not helping, am I? Sorry."

A shiver runs through me, even though the air is still and kept at the same lukewarm temperature. I almost wish I hadn't brought it up. Almost wish I could still let him tell me everything he wants, share the weight and share my own burdens in return. But my mind feels like a lake covered with thin ice, I'm barely sliding on the surface as it is. One fall, and everything would collapse into prickling shards and drag me down.

Standing too long in one place is not safe either, so I stumble on.

"It's not your fault," I say, automatically. It isn't, of course it isn't. But now I know he'll never really believe it, just like I would never believe the attack wasn't mine. "At least you got them out." The shiver grows stronger and I ball my hands into fists. "I didn't get Peeta out of the Arena. Nobody did. You know that's what I wanted, right?"

He turns back to face me. "Couldn't unsee that, Catnip. I get it's horrible for you, though. If I could-"

I grit my teeth and cut across him. "You have no idea! You weren't there, you can't know how-"

"Absolutely not. Not like a person I care about a whole damn lot was taken to the Capitol, and I couldn't get her out and help her, and just had to look at what they were doing to her on a screen. Twice." He started whisper-shouting, but his voice breaks by the end, the last word barely a breath.

"Oh." Most of my anger trickles out with the sigh. I have tried reversing our positions in my head once, but not like this. Maybe he had felt the same, the same urge to scrunch the distance in his fists until it disappears, to reach me, to help me, to get me out, just like I'd want to do now to save Peeta. But I can't help him, he is alone and I'm not, do I even deserve still having someone who understands?

Peeta would say I do, but I'm not so sure.

Gale inches closer and makes an odd movement with his hands, aimless and desperate, as if he wanted to reach for me but thought better of it. "I thought you were dead, Catnip," he says very softly, and rams his hands into his pockets. "When the screen went black. And then they blasted everything, and it was all I could do to make sure the survivors make it a few more days, but not like I could stop thinking about you, not for a second. And then the hovercrafts from Thirteen came to get us, and then _you_  were there, alive, and it was like a fucking miracle. And I know they've hurt you too much and that you want him back more than anything, but I'm not going to tell you I'm not glad they got you out. I don't know, maybe I'm totally wrong and you think about it differently by now, but I know how it is to want to help someone you can't reach."

I've crossed my arms across my stomach and I'm hugging myself, tightly, but it's not enough. Gale pauses and eyes me warily, like he doesn't know how to approach me anymore. I don't know myself, but I'm somehow relieved. It's not exactly the same, it can't possibly be, but I don't have anything to try and fail to explain after all.

"I know I can't tell you to let me help you deal," he continues, "but I'm still here for you, okay?"

"I… I'm glad you are." The words are out before I can stop them, and ring hollow but true. Getting Gale back is still a good thing, better than I could have hoped for. He bites his lip like he'd said to much, or wanted to prevent himself to say something more, but keeps looking into my eyes, trying to read how I really feel.

I hold his gaze. His eyes hold little more than sadness that equals my own, but it's still comforting to see a living, understanding reflection. A spark in the field of ashes that is our home now; in the ashes that covered everything we've ever known, our former selves included.

I still have Gale by my side. Anything else would be… unthinkable. Desperately, I reach for whatever is left of us.

The step forward feels like betrayal but I take it, aching for contact, for a refuge from the aching loneliness. Warm hands and strong heartbeat. When I close my eyes, how different can it be?

I rise onto tiptoes to hide my face in the crook of his neck, nudging his unbuttoned collar aside with my nose to breathe him in. Gale's arms come up to cradle my head and lower back, pressing my whole body against his.

The feeling is still familiar, both painfully and pleasantly so, and I welcome the reminder that my body is still alive, that my mind can still find a little comfort.

Perhaps not enough to block out everything that we've done, what has been done to us, what we'll still have to do before this war is through with us, but enough for now.

I'm still full of icy fear, but I bury myself in his embrace and breathe.

 


	2. not enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (The part two that inevitably gets dirty, because I screw up everything I touch.)

 

**(Our death sentence is now a story…  
…who'll be digging when we finally let it die?)**

He still has my back.

When we deal with the rut and protocol of Thirteen, when we are hunting up on the surface, moving in sync, or when I decide that late wandering around the corridors and hiding in closets might be better with company.

Neither of us can sleep much at night, I know that, not with fire raining from the nightsky behind his lids, not with a clock tick-tocking behind mine, recounting every moment of my arenas and counting every second of Peeta's imprisonment.

Sometimes, I touch the pearl in my pocket even as I crouch in Gale's embrace, silently begging for forgiveness.

Just when I want us to be entirely alone, I tangle it into the light fabric of the parachute and hide it under my pillow before I leave to tap on Gale's door.

We walk together and whisper, and then sit silent in a closet I'd discovered and grown fond of, with Gale leaning against the door so that nobody would open it, me curled between his bent legs, back pressed against his chest.

Unlike me, Gale does keep his schedule and doesn't nap in secret places during the day, and he sometimes falls fast asleep when we sit together like this, chin on my shoulder and arms around my waist. Idly running my fingers over the lines of his hands, I let his breath – so peaceful in those precious moments – lull me to a semblance of comfort as well.

I'm glad he can still draw comfort from me, after all I'm still his friend too, and relieved I don't have to do anything to give it to him, just  _be_.

Even that feels too hard nowadays. I'm still struggling, but I feel safer and more solid now, like I've climbed from the precarious ice onto solid ground. Just with high frozen drifts to wade through.

Everyone supposedly sees me as the spark, but I'm still trying to find one inside me and make it strong enough to melt the snow.

Gale is helping a bit, his arms keeping me warm, his breath in my hair fanning the flame. Even when we aren't sitting outside on our rock but cramped in a dark closet, a part of our old bond survives, and I grasp on it for support.

.

Sometimes, it's not enough.

Then I press my lips against his, not because he's in pain, but because I am. We'd just washed the ashes of our district away again and I taste my tears in his mouth, but some of the misery dissipates as he kisses me breathless.

I welcome it.

While I can breathe, I can still think, I can still worry, I can still feel myself slipping away, and sometimes I'd give my soul to make it  _stop_.

Gale's kisses are different than Peeta's in the arena, but a part of the hunger they wake in me is the same. Another part is different, hot, mindless, coiling deep in the pit of my stomach.

I run my hands over his clothed body, the night garb a bit softer than the jumpsuits we wear during the day, than the military uniforms, but it still gets in the way. I need more, to strip the layer of Thirteen away and get to his skin, groping for life and heartbeat in the darkness.

Without shame, I let him lay me bare me too; it doesn't even matter here where no light can find us, and the walls can come tumbling down for all I care. I need to be touched, need to be reassured that I'm still alive, that my body isn't a heap of ashes that would blow away in the wind.

Our doorway to sustenance and sanity is elsewhere now, and opens only at a strict schedule, but we can still be each other's key.

We adapt, and devour each other instead.

Gale kisses me in places I've never even thought viable to be kissed, sending shocks of pleasure throughout my body, making my blood boil.

Instinctively, I tangle my fingers in his hair and press him further down, feel a rare chuckle against my skin at the urgency.

I give a choked laugh in response and tug at his scalp, gasp when his hot mouth covers my lower lips.

Blood is rushing in my ears and a crack opens in my heart, and I tumble into the emptiness.

Somewhere between Gale's tongue and deft fingers and rugged cheeks brushing the soft skin of my inner thighs, I let go and _forget_  for a moment, bite my own flesh to suppress a scream.

No sweet dreams come to me when I nap in his arms after, but no nightmares either.

.

He has my back when we fight too, throwing his body over mine to protect me from explosions, shooting at my cue, our bodies moving in unison even in the midst of war.

_If we burn, you burn with us_ , I scream, too angry to be afraid.

Most of it peters out by the time we get back, sore and dusty and dirty, my head laying in Gale's lap on the hovercraft floor, but not all.

Part of the rage is still simmering, turning ice to lava, welding the pieces of my mind together, into something steel-firm but twisted.

I'm beyond fearing death, and now I know I don't need to be afraid of life either, at least not for the time being.

Having to chase what little nutrition I could get in the woods, my body had managed only a few natural cycles before I was called into the first games. None since because even a full body polish and victory spoils weren't enough to return me to full health.

Even if I'd really made love to Peeta sometime before the Quell announcement, after a secret toasting and in hopes of carving out a tiny bright future just for us, there would have been no baby.

My body is about as barren as my district now, and since my fake propaganda-pregnancy had just been publicly terminated; fixing it is nowhere near Thirteen's priority.

I'm not afraid of life, but there's a little death I crave, a moment of abandon.

.

The sun is setting behind steely clouds, a brilliant disc with no orange shadows to soften it. Red like a recording light, red like innocent blood.

We are hidden outside in the woods now, moving as two parts of one being still.

Gale's body is a war-torn landscape just like mine, with the whipping scars etched deep into his back, his right arm singed from Twelve, some shrapnel-scratches marring his torso. Now in the dying light I can see it all, and dive right in regardless, to take what's left of my anger out on him, leaving deep pink marks on brown skin, watching his pupils dilate, watching the storm rage in his dark gray eyes. Clawing at him as we get closer, his shoulders, his back, the lean curves of his ass. Gasping as I let him bury himself inside me, trying to bury myself in him along with my grief and guilt.

This is what I wanted, isn't it?

_I have chosen Gale and the rebellion._

I repeat that in my head, over and over as he slams into me, one of my hands seeking purchase on the rough bark of the tree we are leaning against, another digging nails into his hip to spur him on.

We devour each other, but to no end.

Gale tangles his fingers with mine and squeezes, not hard, reminding me he'd hold my heart more gently than I have him treat my body. I dig my nails into the back of his hand, and don't know if I could say the same.

Sweat and anger under my nails, his blood pulsing deep under my skin. Heat and raw pleasure. And when he drives me over the edge, explosions beneath my lids, like planes blown out of the sky.

My breath catches in my throat and thoughts combust together.

I'm full of him, full of fire.

.

(Only a part of my heart remains empty, where the key to salvation would fit.)


	3. never enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Just because I'm best at updating 'complete' stuff. If everything goes wrong there will be one more.)

**(We wear our ruin well…**

**…** **please run away with me to hell)**

That place will be empty forever.

I'd sat with Finnick for hours, my fingers raw from twisting a piece of rope into a noose again and again, a broken voice singing in my head.

_Are you are you coming to the tree…_

Peeta had warned us, called for us to flee, his blood splattering the camera lens for his trouble.

I could see nothing but them for the three days we spent deep in an underground bunker as bombs rained on the already ravaged surface of Thirteen.

I could see them again on the white rose petals that came after, to wait for me in the ruins as a last message.

Then I  _understood_ , and the string holding my mockingjay wings together broke apart.

Coin and Plutarch finally agreed on a rescue mission, then. Haymitch told me Gale was the first to volunteer only after he was gone.

I was left to tie strings, to distract and to wait, seconds whispering in my brain and hope slowly bleeding out.

I though I'd lost it when the due time for their arrival came and passed, and time dragged on.

I lost it entirely when they returned after all, mechanical clocks beeping midnight.

Against all odds, I got Peeta back. Only for his hands to wrap like a noose around my throat.

The last thing I could see before I blacked out was my own reflection is his dilated pupils.

Warped, twisted, red eyes and gaping mouth.

Mutt.

That's what he growled at me then, and may have been finally right.

.

He was back but hijacked away, and I had to run away from the constant reminder of who I've lost.

As soon as I could get out of bed, I asked to be relocated, as far away as possible.

.

Peeta is locked in the hospital deep in Thirteen, and now that I am gone, Prim and Delly and a whole team of doctors can reassure him that he's finally safe. I can hope they'll help him enough to heal his body and piece his mind back together, that he'll be strong enough to live on. At least with himself, if not with me.

I took the pearl along on my journey, but keep it shrouded and hidden, reluctant to touch it with dirty mutt fingers.

.

I took Gale along too, he'd offered to accompany me straight away, and I couldn't bring myself to resist. I knew I'd be tearing him away from his family, but he was torn enough as it was, and getting him out of Special Weaponry could only be for good.

I don't care about him making weapons to counter Snow's latest gambit. He might as well make war to me, make me explode. I can punish him for being a bad boy and thinking up horrible things, scratch and bite at him until I collapse into his arms.

His body may be marred and mind clouded with desire to avenge everything that's been done to us, but he can still recognize me, accept me as I am, hold me like I'm somehow precious. He kisses the bruises on my neck with soft warm lips and empty whispers, but however deep inside me I let him, he can't reach the bruise my heart has become, dark with poisoned blood.

.

The woods in Two are sparse with thorny undergrowth, some hills ending suddenly with sheer cliffs of long exhausted quarries.

Gale roams them with me when we get there in between fighting and my failed attempts at getting more of the district on our side. For what the others should know, I take him along on hunting trips as my bodyguard, but more often than not, we are each other's main prey.

Off cameras, he's all mine. Like always.

There's a new wound on Gale's body too, not yet a scar, from a bullet buried under the wing of his shoulderblade. Perhaps he took it for Peeta, I'll never know, I won't ask. He flinches in pain when my heel brushes against the bandage as he lifts my leg over his good shoulder, kneeling before me as if asking some sort of absolution.

I have none to give, neither to him nor to myself, but I caress his hair as he makes me come against the tree, calloused hands cradling my hips, tongue drawing letters I don't allow him to say.

.

Even the trees are different here, tall pillars with stone-smooth gray bark, alive but bare and cold in the late autumn. Sometimes, I close my eyes as we fuck against them, imagine them to be the marble of Snow's tomb, and the blood from my bitten lip tastes like the salted earth of his empire laid waste.

I can scream freely when we are far enough for nobody to hear us, and I do, mind reeling with terror even as my body spasms in pleasure.

Some of the dread fades when I hold Gale's face in my palms after, thumbs brushing swollen, glistening lips. There's still warmth in his eyes, a fire tamed just for me.

Enough to sustain me and keep me sane, not enough to save me.

But I crave more of him, still.

.

Weeks later, we are in the shadow of the Capitol's main mountain fortress, isolated but still hiding a force of men and machines that could spill forth whenever the siege let up, and conquer back everything the rebels have so dearly won.

In a few hours, a council should decide what to do with it. Gale was invited and so was the Mockingjay.

Neither of us could sleep and we cling together in the dying night, partly bared bodies shivering with pre-dawn chill. I'm pressed against Gale's back, my lips brushing the now-healed wound from the rescue mission, palms spread over his chest.

He turns in my arms moments later, hands firm but gentle on my hips. Kisses me with odd sweetness, the way he could have on cold mornings when we used to meet before daybreak to hunt, as if we were whole and innocent and as young as we are supposed to be.

I can almost imagine the taste of blackberries between our lips.

Tears sting in the corners of my eyes as I try to return the affection, my hands moving all over his body, seeking a place to rest that isn't a scar.

Finding none, push him away and to the ground instead.

When he lays down, I straddle him, legs bare with boots shoved haphazardly back on cold feet, the gray wings of my open shirt hanging from my shoulders. Settling like a blanket of ashes over both of us as Gale pulls me down, our chests pressed together, his heart hammering against my ribcage, begging entrance, perhaps.

I bury my face in the crook of his neck, breathing him in along with the strange forest, with the rotting earth.

Gale cradles the back of my head with one hand; my braid wrapped around his palm, and touches me with the other, skilled fingers winding me up and letting me go.

Again and again as I press my teeth into his neck, trapped in his embrace but so lightheaded that for a moment, I feel free.

Kissing my way up his jaw, I press gratitude into his skin, and sink down onto him. Our bodies join in liquid fire, I'm so ready I don't even feel myself stretch to accommodate him. So I just sigh into his mouth as we effortlessly melt together, finding bliss we can't possibly deserve.

Our thin dark fingers entwined between dead leaves and my knees pressed painfully into the hard earth remind me where we belong.

.

After, we sit huddled together like we used to in the closets of Thirteen, Gale leaning back against a tree and me curled in his lap. Our clothes are back on, but I'm still shivering, with the hot aftershocks of what we've done and the cold air pressing in wherever Gale's not touching me.

We are silent, breathing as freely as we can bring ourselves to.

Time is creeping towards the morning, but no sun breaks through the clouds, the night just slowly fades to gray.

Even that suddenly makes me feel too exposed; I find myself wanting to run again and disappear, to fly away on my own terms rather than have to wear my uniform again.

I'm afraid, I don't even know of what exactly, but so much I hardly dare to admit it. Even if we were to win, everything would be in shambles, and I realize I'm more afraid of trying to make a new life in the crumbs of Panem than of dying to ensure the possibility for others. I'm afraid of what I'll have to do before I finally lay my own life down.

I want to run away from it all.

I clutch Gale's hand with stiff fingers and he automatically returns the pressure.

Would he still go with me? Could we still do it?

Would Coin and Snow compete in a Mockingjay-hunt until they dig us from wherever we may hide? Or could we fade to obscurity, live a little, and then let the wilderness devour us in turn?

"I want to run away," I say, the soft, broken words squeezing past my lips so that at least they could be free.

Gale buries his face in my hair, I can feel his soundless sigh. Something in him would still want that, I'm sure. A pure trace of my boy from my woods.

"Me too. Still. Sometimes, all I want is to take your hand and leave this mess behind and never look back. But you know we can't, Catnip," he whispers. "Not any more than we could have before."

I do.

I think of Peeta, tortured and driven mad with hatred of me. I can't help him now, not when I've become the thing he fears most, but I could still fight for a better world where he could live free of my shadow. Where his children would be safe. Where Prim and Gale's siblings and our mothers would be safe. They are waiting in Thirteen, hoping for our return, victorious or at least alive, and I can't help but think of them as some sort of hostages.

We have too many people looking to us. Too many enemies, obvious or hidden.

I lay my head back against Gale's shoulder, looking straight up at the slate sky. "I know. Let's go back."

"Okay."

Gale squeezes me in his arms once more, untangles the knot of our limbs and rises, eyes fixing on a particular peak on the horizon.

_That's where the hovercrafts came from_. I know he's thinking that because I catch myself thinking the same. A different fire starts simmering in his eyes again, the kind that turns his heart into a burial ground.

The kind that won't let him run, that will draw him back to the fray, a moth to his own flame.

The one I should be backing away from, but I'm too jaded to try.

Come what may.

Whatever will be left when the war is through with us, we'll deal with that later.

When he offers me his hand, I take it and let him pull me to my feet, to lead me back where 'duty' calls us.

There's still something left to crush.

 


	4. too much

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Fair warning: I kill them here.)

 

**(Blow out the candles on all my frankensteins…**

**…** **at least my death wish will come true)**

In the end, we are the ones crushed.

Like a mountain, like a city, like the world as we've known it.

Blasted apart, like my sister caught in the crossfire.

Cold, dead inside.

I'm standing like a statue as my old prep team flits around me. They are trying to salvage me still, to paint the ruin all pretty and have it perform one last task.

There's a knock on the door and I shoo them out and away when I glimpse the visitor. Gale enters to hand me one last arrow for my empty bow.

For a second, I think about plunging it into his neck, or my own, whatever difference would that make.

None at all, I guess.

We both failed.

I haven't seen him since our last mission, when he fell into an abyss I'd narrowly escaped, only to run into the fire where everything ended.

"Was it the thing you've been working on?" I choke out.

"I don't know yet. You know I left with you before we could finish it," he says. "But does that matter? I left the idea there. That was enough. Too much."

"I left Prim there," I say, unnecessarily. If I'd stayed back like I was supposed to, instead of clawing my way to my last mission that achieved nothing, Coin would have had to pry her from my cold dead arms if she wanted to harm her. And then, if I were the one dead, she wouldn't have a reason to bother. Thinking I was getting my way and finally taking control, I just ended up playing right into her hand. Giving her the power to destroy me in a single stroke.

We are looking into a mirror side by side, still too similar even with our differences, like magnets repulsed by our own power or inexorably drawn together, depending on how we turn.

Mine are partly covered in makeup now, but even the scars on our faces are matching, his misused vengeance burned into my flesh, my unwanted punishment into his.

The ashes in our eyes are the same.

In a sudden fit of rage against everything that conspired to bring us here, to this end, I lash out with my fist and hit the mirror, breaking it to match our faces, to match us.

"Katniss…" Gale snatches my wrist to inspect the damage, my knuckles are bleeding, but not alarmingly fast. If there's pain, I don't feel it. I don't bother to snatch my hand back. A few tears fall from my eyes among the droplets of blood dripping from our intertwined fingers, angry or sad or both. With my head bowed, I can see a fragmented reflection of Gale's face still, staring at me from the shards, contrite, shattered, all anger turned into guilt, clawing inwards.

"I'm sorry. I never wanted it to end like this."

I look up to see a tear fall down his cheek too, and I wipe it away, smearing his face with blood instead. ''I know. It doesn't matter anymore."

Now, I should be able to let him go and think about moving on, for the sake of my sanity and perhaps his too, to let the specter of guilt between us dissolve, to allow the open wounds we've become to heal.

I'm not planning to make it far enough for that, though.

I grab his collar instead, and kiss him for a long painful moment - all teeth, salt, copper and regret.

And goodbye.

My heart may have been unreachable for too long, but he's still a part of whatever is left of me, I'd have to claw him from every inch of skin I'd let him touch, out of every atom of my being. I bite his lip, drawing blood to take one more bit of his essence with me as I leave him behind in this world.

He breathes heavily when I'm done, waits too long to open his eyes.

I turn away and to the sink, stick my hands under cold water, hold them there until it runs clear. Gale joins me to do the same after he wipes my bloodstains off his face.

If only everything could be washed away that easily.

My bleeding resumes as soon as I take my hand away from the cold stream, so Gale rips a strip of fabric off his uniform and crudely bandages my cut knuckles, thumb brushing the back of my hand after he's done.

"Shoot straight, Catnip," he says, very softly. "I'll have your back."

I nod and leave without a backward glance, fragments of the broken mirror crunching under my feet, traces of red in my wake.

.

I face Snow, bound and defeated, and Coin standing triumphant above him.

Both of their eyes are gleaming with deception, a dark twisted joy.

I get my bow ready. My hand is throbbing with pain, but I can still pull the string one last time.

I choose the one that ended up causing me more pain, the one that had more pain to give to whoever comes after.

"The Games are over," I yell as I let my arrow fly.

''I vote NO!" I add as it plunges right into Coin's chest. Her body doubles over and topples over the railing of her balcony, falls down at Snow's feet.

His blood splatters over her slush-gray clothes as he laughs until he chokes, coughing his life out.

I try to ingest my death even as strange hands grab at me to capture me again, twisting my head to bite into the nightlock capsule still hidden in a tiny pocket on my shoulder. Biting into Peeta's fingers instead, meeting the sliver of hope in his sky blue eyes. Feeling it slip right through the cracks in my mind, in my heart, in my soul.

I spit his blood onto the flagstones. I no longer care to be saved, to take his hand and go with him to whatever world that lies beyond our arenas.

I want to die in this one, with the ashes of my sister under my feet.

I scream at Gale to shoot me, but no bullet comes to free me.

He said he'll have my back.

Fucking liar.

.

They lock me high up in the training center, for the third time.

Others might be debating if and how to kill me, but nobody comes to ask me what I'd prefer, and the bare cell offers no possibilities of making a final escape.

Only my mind slips off an edge, beyond inhibitions, and I begin to sing, every song I've ever known.

It lasts days. Weeks. Maybe months. I don't know.

I sing.

The only thing left of me is my voice, but nobody wants to listen anymore.

No visitors come when I'm awake, nourishment and medicine seep into my veins when I sleep, keeping me alive, caged and trapped in my own body.

Only nightmares keep me company.

Of my father descending to the mines for the last time, dying over and over in mother's glassy eyes.

Child killers and child corpses, rising back to life as mutts, teeth and claws glinting in every shadow.

Peeta's fingers slipping around my throat.

Prim's lips forming my name as she bursts into flames.

A hood slipping over Gale's head and a noose around his neck.

I wake from that one with a long, long scream.

.

It's still ringing in my ears when Haymitch comes to get me, leading me into a hovercraft through a trapdoor in the ceiling.

Pulling his victor out of the arena one last time, I guess. Alone.

I'm clawing at him until he assures me the other one is in good care.

That's all I want of him now.

.

I wait until we are back in Twelve to ask about others.

My mother has gone to Four, building a new hospital in a new place, and I'm almost relieved. I wouldn't want to ask her why she'd led Prim go to the Capitol, wouldn't want her to ask why I've gone there myself.

Only when I ask about Gale, Haymitch shrugs and waves his arms, suspiciously eager to be someplace else.

"Pretty much where he volunteered to go. Don't you worry, sweetheart."

I grab him by the sleeve, not letting him go. "Where exactly?"

He shakes his head, too hard, too fast.

"You know," I say in a low growl, jabbing a finger into his chest. "We're done lying to each other. You know that too, right?"

Haymitch grabs my accusing hand and speaks, very slowly. "We needed to dig up as much dirt on Coin as we could to justify you killing her and to get you out. And to make sure nobody would think following through with her policies is a good idea. You know some of it fell on him too. She gave him more credit than he was due in the files she'd left, both about the Nut and the City Circle. Just to have a scapegoat in case someone wanted to dig too deep into her  _glorious_ victory, I guess."

The air seems to have gone a few degrees colder. I've seen the face he's giving me now once before, on the hovercraft when he told me Peeta was taken by the Capitol. I wrench my hand out of his. "Why nobody called me and asked me? What was I? Too crazy to speak for myself? To speak for him? Not like I'd bother to defend myself, but if the other choice was…"

"That was a part of the problem, sweetheart," he cuts across me. "And a part of getting you acquitted."

My nightmare appears fresh under my lids; the Hanging Tree is playing in my head. I don't want to know. I need to know. "What happened to him?"

"They put him on trial too. Made an example out of him." He smiles wryly and mimics the Capitol accent; whoever has something to do with law probably still uses it. "Lest the crimes committed in pursuit of freedom be repeated. Or more like to placate Two and whoever in the Capitol they wanted to keep loyal. Didn't help they caught him aiming at you after you'd killed Coin. Hard to tell what side he was on, right then."

I open and close my mouth, strangled from inside out.  _My side_. Always mine. I see Haymitch's last words clearer than I hear them; see his hands forming a noose in the air.

"He's dead, Katniss. I'm sorry."

I don't know what I do after that.

I think I scream.

I think I want to hit him but collapse against Haymitch instead, my tears staining his dirty shirt.

I think I hit him for real when he tries to shush me, to tell me it's gonna be okay, that life goes on. That I should just wait a little, that Peeta will be cured and coming back after all.

I can't bring myself to care anymore.

There's not enough of me left to need him, not enough to take back whatever he meant to me, to be whatever I might mean to him now.

Beyond the barricade is not a world I want to see, not a world I want to be saved for.

Not after knowing who died to create it.

.

Gale fulfilled his promise after all, but not in a way I wanted him to. He went too far beyond the line trying to fight for me, more than once.

Perhaps I should have wanted him punished for some of his plans, but never like this. Not in a way that had him coming to the tree first, that made him the one who left me behind when all I wanted was the opposite.

Peeta's words come back to me, from a time when I was watching him through a screen, Gale tense at my side.  _It costs everything you are_.

I should have known.

The price to pay for freedom that should have been ours without a fight couldn't have been less than too much.

.

I paid most of it already, there's just one installment left.

.

After days I don't remember beginning or ending, I force myself to exist on. Pretend to be holding out, delight Haymitch and Greasy Sae by asking for things to be delivered by the next supply train. Three blank books, feather pens and bottles of ink. A primrose straight from a greenhouse in the former Capitol, because the winter hasn't let up enough to allow real ones to bloom yet.

I trade it all for my mockingjay pin. It's probably worth way more than its tiny weight in bloody gold now, but I don't care.

I've given too much for it already.

.

Peeta and Delly are supposed to arrive by the next train, but I don't wait around.

I'll believe they are happy and safe.

Always.

.

I bury the pearl in the flowerpot, tuck it to rest between the roots of the primrose.

Leave it beside the plantbook, with an artless sketch of a hawthorn I'd added to the last page.

I don't know why it wasn't there before.

Doesn't matter.

Now it is.

.

Soon after, I fill my old game bag to bursting, tie an extra blanket over my shoulders and set out. I leave everything behind, the ashes, the fledgling bits of reconstruction that's already begun, and don't plan on coming back.

Flurries of late snow settle on my shoes rimmed with cinders as I trek through the woods, my feet following the most familiar path of their own accord.

The rock where Gale and I used to meet is too wide and so cold, the gray surface starred with frost. I huddle there alone, hugging my own knees for a little warmth while the wind plays with my hair, brushing the tendrils from my face like Gale would have done.

He's never coming back.

I have to keep reminding myself as my eyes search for his ghost in the trees.

The blackberry bushes around are bare and lifeless, a prickly mess of thorns. I break off brittle brown twigs and wrestle them into a wreath, bloodying my fingers. Leave it there on the rock as if it were his grave. Our grave.

I rise slowly, with aching joints and empty heart, and continue on.

.

Snow piles up, covering my tracks.

Good. I'm sure people will come looking for me after Sae or Haymitch raise an alarm when they find out about my disappearance, and some survivors from Twelve might think of the place I'm aiming for, but I won't be discovered too early.

Slower and slower, I drag myself to the house by the lake, my body so weak I hardly make it.

I'm alone but not a stranger, I remember everything as we've left it, the hearth, the pile of wood, the crooked iron poker from the rubble of Gale's old house.

Everything ready for me, but I don't use it.

I don't want to make a fire, not anymore.

I dump my things in one corner and get out again, colder but lighter now, and step onto the lake itself, the thin ice creaking dangerously under my feet but firm enough to hold my weight.

For a moment, I think of stomping hard and shattering it, of letting the cold water drag me down. Wouldn't be much colder, much darker, much number than I already am.

Still, I resist the temptation. I'd set out to do one more thing, to piece the fragments of my mind together before I move further on, even if it's not for me.

So I slide back to the frozen shore, wade through the snow back to the tiny house. President Snow might be gone but the winter still lasts, spring only an empty promise.

Inside, I nestle into the blankets and eat a small meal of hard bread, stale cheese and dried berries, a sad mockery of the breakfast I'd eaten with Gale, before the journey that led me here began.

Then I start to write. Bleeding my heart out with the ink, filling the white pages with sharp, untidy scrawl, burying all my dead in them. Exhuming myself for the living, if anyone ever finds them.

.

_When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold…_

.

Everything is cold now and my hands ache, but I keep writing, trapping ghosts in shaky strokes of black ink, sometimes smudged with tears. Using up my meager provisions as snow drifts high against the closed door, wafts in through the tiny pane-less window that provides a beam of light to see by, but not enough space for me to slip out of.

Not yet.

Kindling a fire after all, melting handfuls of snow in a small metal cup, trying to capture the liquid heat inside as I drink it almost boiling.

Staring into the last embers long after everything burns up, everything except my bow and the tree books, now filled but for the last few sentences.

I think I see Prim's face in them, in the white fluff drifting up with wisps of smoke when I blow on them to keep them going just a little longer.

_And then I left so that I'd be free at last, left to seek everyone I've lost._

I feel myself drifting closer to her, the little white and pink bird that tried to hold me above the abyss.

_For better or worse._

Not for long.

_I'm done playing games._

I press my last quill into the embers, watch the feather disintegrate.

Like Prim.

The warmth doesn't last long after that, and winter seeps unhindered into my weary bones.

Hours stretch and the night clears, I watch the stars move in the sliver of sky visible through my window. A moonbeam finds me, the cold silver light beckoning me to follow.

To soar away like everyone else. Like Prim.

Her world ended in fire, mine will with ice.

It was never supposed to go like this,but the oblivion is sweet, creeping like a final dose of morphling through my heavy limbs.

.

All sides of my makeshift bed are cold and

I'm falling asleep.

.

I dream of things, of everything good and warm that's been taken from me, that I've left behind, that will never be.

Of children playing in the meadow after it has grown green again. They could have been mine, in a different life, if everything wasn't too much, if it weren't too late. But they will be there, and perhaps someone will tell them my name

\- Peeta would, his voice would paint me in colors I never knew I possessed, and he'd ruffle their golden hair with cinnamon-scented fingers –

perhaps a mockingjay will perch by and whistle an old melody.

Rue's melody…

…her soft brown eyes, I remember…

…her laugh, Prim's laugh, her warm body curled next to me, little Posy falling asleep against my other side as both our families piled up on a single rickety couch.

Father's songs, mother's embrace when I was small enough for her to lift, when I trusted her completely.

.

Sunlight on my skin, summers in the woods, sour apples roasted over a campfire.

.

The heat of Gale's body, the pressure of his lips. His hands gentle, untainted with ashes and blood.

I can almost feel them reaching for me, from somewhere where we both can be free again.

.

It's not real.

.

It's just cold, so cold I no longer feel it.

.

I think my lips freeze into a tiny smile.

.

(Among so many others

there on the other side

waits the only person with whom I can be myself.)


End file.
